Friday, April 4, 2014

Fiction Friday: Something a little bit different

For several weeks, the members of Ruby Slippers Media have
been posting snippets of our work here. At first, I had planned to share a bit
of my published work, maybe something from Afterlife or Fathom. That’s the
reasonable thing to do, right? Show you something that will intrigue you and
possibly cause you to buy one of my books. But I’d rather show you something I’m
working on right now—something that’s not finished and that you couldn’t buy,
even if you wanted to.

The newest creation always burns the brightest and gives off
the most heat, in the creator’s heart anyway.

So, below is part of chapter 4, from my current WIP, titled The
Summer of Fire and Ice.

Chapter 4

The room was brighter than any I’d been in before, with four
oil lamps burning and a full fire crackling in the hearth. A welcoming heat
rolled over me and I removed my cloak, carefully watching John as he stared
down at the furry limbs spread across the table. They were from different animals,
one hind leg was longer than the others and had silver fur, while the other
legs were a dark grey; the torso was barrel-chested and wide and covered with
black fur. I glanced in the nearby wheelbarrow and noticed that in the left
over pieces, all of the heads save one had been crushed.

John reached into the barrow and drew out the one head that
was still intact, jaws swinging open as he carried it to the table. I
recognized it immediately. It was the head that had landed at my feet when I
opened the front door.

I stepped back in horror, afraid its jaws were moving of its
own accord.

“Do not worry, Mary,” John said. “It was only a reflex.
Before long, the joints will stiffen, but for now they move easily. The beast
is dead. But watch this.”

He took a stick and prodded one of the wolf’s legs. It
flinched, as if trying to get away from the stick.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen this before, except in frog legs, but this
is why I came here. For years, I’ve been looking for the right place, the right
circumstances. I thought if I got to a crime scene in time, I might discover
it, but I never did. Then I heard about how every year, there were mysterious
violent deaths here, in the mountains that surrounded Lake Geneva, and I heard
that sometimes the dead bodies that were left behind weren’t fully dead.”

He lifted his head to look at me, his dark eyes so deep that
I worried I could get lost in them.

“I don’t understand. How can something be dead, but not
fully dead?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But it sounded so close to the theories of
Erasmus Darwin, that I had to explore it. I was the one who convinced Byron to
come here, when he had to leave England. He knew some of the local folklore, so
he thought this might be an intriguing intellectual adventure.” John was
watching me, his gaze moving from my eyes to my mouth, then back. “But I didn’t
know that he was going to invite you or Claire. I would never have willing
brought either of you to a place that might be dangerous.”

“I’m not afraid,” I told him, realizing that it was true. “I
don’t fully understand these theories, but I would like to know more.”

He smiled and, for an instant, the room seemed even
brighter. There was a childlike innocence in his expression that I had never
noticed before. Perhaps he had been hiding it from me, just like I tried to
hide my bouts of melancholy from others.

“You were right when you said I was about to perform an
experiment,” he said as he drew several items from the bag he always carried
with him. He began by threading a long, curved needle with pale, flaxen thread.
“I’m going to try stitching the animal back together. I don’t know what will
happen, especially since I have pieces from different wolves here, but if there
really is life left in this flesh, it’s possible I may be able to—”

He paused, as if he didn’t dare finish his sentence. So I
finished it for him.

“Bring it back to life.”

He nodded. Then he began to sew.

…….

I hope you enjoyed that portion of my latest creation! Thank
you for stopping by to check out what’s going on at RSM blog. I hope you find
something wonderfully beautiful and slightly scary to read for this weekend!

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